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SAY WHAT? Marina Sirtis Almost Fired!

It often seems that writers, casting people, and producers in sci fi shows lack seem to lack respect for their female characters as well as the actors. Part of it is a power play to keep the women in their place and part is just chauvinism.

Michelle Forbes was great. She gave them just not quite enough and made them beg for more.
 
^The character of Ro made season 5 better, especially in Conundrum where her conflict with Riker hinted at some mutual attraction, and it was good to have a recurring character at the helm.
 
Armus said:
^The character of Ro made season 5 better, especially in Conundrum where her conflict with Riker hinted at some mutual attraction, and it was good to have a recurring character at the helm.
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Ro is in my top ten favourite characters for sure.

In fairness, there were some half-hearted attempts to introduce other recurring female characters. I'm not sure why most of them only lasted one or two episodes: Commander McDougal (Brooke Bundy wasn't available for the episodes they needed her), Selar, Sonia Gomez, Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd was on the up and couldn't be persuaded to skip more mainstream parts), or Ensign Rager (Lanei Chapman had much greater range as seen in Space, Above and Beyond).

It's curious that male guess stars seem to have more longevity. I think it's partly because they are less defined by their gender (i.e. less likely to be deemed worthy as a fleeting love interest of a male character) Selar was touted as a possible love interest for Worf - what the hell - and was another medical doctor - what the hell - in a show that was lacking scientific characters of all sorts. What a waste.

I think Troi suffered from this mindset. Until much later in the show's run, Troi-centric episodes revolved around her getting a love interest, her mother, or her empathy. Despite being a Lt-Commander with diplomatic credentials of her own, she never got any episodes that focused on her skills as a diplomat, psychologist, or senior officer.

In Disaster, she was clueless about how the ship was run - very insulting. Sirtis was also frustrated that she never got any action scenes unless she was possessed. I wish they'd given Sirtis more input into her characterisation. I bet she would have livened up Troi from the start .
 
I could be wrong, but it feels like she's already told this story several times, and it makes me wonder why it's still considered news. Only the reasons have changed over the years. First, it was because one of the production people said she couldn't act. Then it was because they said she was getting chubby. Then it was because they didn't know what to do with her character.

I can only think this is getting traction again because anytime someone says "ZOMG misogyny!" today, blogs are on it like flies on honey.

To be honest, while I like Troi, the best female characters the show did were Lwaxana, Pulaski, Ro, Keiko, and Guinan. Of those, Pulaski was my favorite.
 
Considering that TNG grew out of Phase II, Picard certainly isn't comparable to Kirk. They did work to make the characters different. Even Riker looks very different to Decker, the Yang to Picard's Ying perhaps. If anything, Troi is far more narrow than Ilia: not a bridge officer, no pheromone control, no defined culture.

Pulaski, while a great character, was too self-consciously trying to ape McCoy. Her main fault was that fans didn't want to lose Crusher.

As far as banging the misogyny drum goes though, if we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it. The first two NuTrek movies were appallingly and casually sexist. The third one put in more effort thankfully. It is still important to remind people of these past mistakes I'm afraid.
 
Pauln6 said:
Pulaski, while a great character, was too self-consciously trying to ape McCoy. Her main fault was that fans didn't want to lose Crusher.
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I didn't like her, but she was an interesting character. I wonder if that was less common on TV in the 80s. She was a "good guy", i.e. not a criminal or enemy, but she wasn't very likable. Picard was like that in the beginning of the series. It's a harder sell than the TOS heros who were also likable.
 
G. Curto said:
Pretty messed up for folks who were supposed to be "enlightened." Another example of Roddenberry's hypocrisy.
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Whilst I generally agree with your point here, I think the context of trying to make a television show in the late 1980s may have influenced things here so it may have less to do with hypocrisy and more to do with economics and marketing.

G. Curto said:
That's misogyny in action. If the men were having problems writing for the women then hire more women writers don't get rid of the actresses. It also doesn't speak well of their abilities AS writers.
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Didn’t they have issues over what to do with Riker in s1 as well? His character changed drastically from s1 into s2. I think Frakes commented on this in an interview - he basically wasn’t allowed to smile in s1 :lol:

But I agree with your overall point.

And some of the s1 writing stinks.

But, we must be careful about looking back at something from 30 years ago through a modern lens.

G. Curto said:
I mean their knee-jerk answer was not let's correct the problem rather it was let's just get rid of the female leads.
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Totally agree. Yet, would it have been believable to the audience to have these characters suddenly change overnight? Maybe it would have been more realistic to replace them with better characters - despite how unfair that would have been. I’m not saying they should have lost the female leads altogether, but it might have worked had they created new female characters more along the lines of later Dax in DS9 to replace Troi and Crusher.

But generally I think DS9 did a way better job with its female characters than TNG did. No breaking pots over peoples heads for people qualified to sword fight on DS9...!
 
There were 6 men and 3 women. They should have ADDED characters like Dax, not replaced existing ones.

We can look at TNG through the prism of 80s sexism but what about NuTrek? TMP did a better job of making TOS less sexist. NuTrek made it even more sexist by stripping out key female characters like T'pau and Number One.

I think I dislike Trip Tucker more than Pulaski. A doctor is peripheral to the command structure. Chief engineer needs to be more professional.

The sixth Doctor suffered from being too unlikeable . They were planning to make him soften over time but ratings suffered .
 
I thought Gates left to do her 20 seconds on Hunt for Red October. A film that also featured a Enterprise
 
Pauln6 said:
There were 6 men and 3 women. They should have ADDED characters like Dax, not replaced existing ones.

We can look at TNG through the prism of 80s sexism but what about NuTrek? TMP did a better job of making TOS less sexist. NuTrek made it even more sexist by stripping out key female characters like T'pau and Number One.

I think I dislike Trip Tucker more than Pulaski. A doctor is peripheral to the command structure. Chief engineer needs to be more professional.

The sixth Doctor suffered from being too unlikeable . They were planning to make him soften over time but ratings suffered .
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I question your choice of ‘key’ characters. Also...what does Colin Baker have to do with anything?
 
Pauln6 said:
Considering that TNG grew out of Phase II, Picard certainly isn't comparable to Kirk. They did work to make the characters different. Even Riker looks very different to Decker, the Yang to Picard's Ying perhaps. If anything, Troi is far more narrow than Ilia: not a bridge officer, no pheromone control, no defined culture.

Pulaski, while a great character, was too self-consciously trying to ape McCoy. Her main fault was that fans didn't want to lose Crusher.

As far as banging the misogyny drum goes though, if we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it. The first two NuTrek movies were appallingly and casually sexist. The third one put in more effort thankfully. It is still important to remind people of these past mistakes I'm afraid.
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t say it was...appallingly sexist. It was a bit of a step backward for Trek though. Every Trek film has a female character front and centre with the exception of V (and Nemesis...but that’s a different kettle of fish. Lily usurped Crusher in F.C., then Anij did the same in INS.) and the series had basically reached full equality, from a certain perspective, by the time of VOY. ENT is a step backwards, barely saved by giving T’Pol a large amount of story and screen time....the JJ films? Yeah. A bit sexist, definitely in comparison. Amanda gets fridged, Uhura has most of her scenes revolve around her relationship status....Beyond improves on this in oh so many ways, and Uhura gets much much more to do (great scene with her communicating silently with Kirk as the ship goes down, she’s the de facto leader of the captured crew) and there’s Jayla and the...is her name Admiral Paris? She doesn’t stick in my head, but she’s in command of Yorktown. There’s also Kralls right-hand woman, who almost sends up sexism with her false Leia gambit. Beyond is better Trek for bunches of reasons I guess.
 
Pauln6 said:
Ro is in my top ten favourite characters for sure.

In fairness, there were some half-hearted attempts to introduce other recurring female characters. I'm not sure why most of them only lasted one or two episodes: Commander McDougal (Brooke Bundy wasn't available for the episodes they needed her), Selar, Sonia Gomez, Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd was on the up and couldn't be persuaded to skip more mainstream parts), or Ensign Rager (Lanei Chapman had much greater range as seen in Space, Above and Beyond).

It's curious that male guess stars seem to have more longevity. I think it's partly because they are less defined by their gender (i.e. less likely to be deemed worthy as a fleeting love interest of a male character) Selar was touted as a possible love interest for Worf - what the hell - and was another medical doctor - what the hell - in a show that was lacking scientific characters of all sorts. What a waste.

I think Troi suffered from this mindset. Until much later in the show's run, Troi-centric episodes revolved around her getting a love interest, her mother, or her empathy. Despite being a Lt-Commander with diplomatic credentials of her own, she never got any episodes that focused on her skills as a diplomat, psychologist, or senior officer.

In Disaster, she was clueless about how the ship was run - very insulting. Sirtis was also frustrated that she never got any action scenes unless she was possessed. I wish they'd given Sirtis more input into her characterisation. I bet she would have livened up Troi from the start .
Click to expand...

I think in some ways it’s the kind of identity based think we see today, but coming from a different quarter. The target audience for SF in the eighties is boys. They seem to make up the largest group. People only like watching characters like them right? That’s how they identify with them? So they fill it full of male leads, and some attractive female leads...even Wesley, the audience identified for kids...has a a gender flip in preproduction. Because that’s how it will nab the biggest audience right?
But it’s Trek, so it’s still much more representative.
If you look at the casting of ‘female orientated’ programming, you get the same sort of thing, even today. You will have male characters whose job is to fulfill stereotypes in much the way Troi and Crusher were (eye candy, caring professions...male equivalent is the emotionally difficult eye candy, whose job is to hit things or be hit...) right across programming. It changes a bit by the nineties, especially in SF made by actual fans of SF. Though we see a nascent form of this in Tash a yar
 
cgervasi said:
I didn't like her, but she was an interesting character. I wonder if that was less common on TV in the 80s. She was a "good guy", i.e. not a criminal or enemy, but she wasn't very likable.
Click to expand...

It was pretty common on '80s shows like Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, China Beach and Diana Muldaur's next series, L.A. Law, to have characters who were abrasive and didn't always get along with their colleagues.
 
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